Democratic Washington, D.C. mayoral nominee Janeese Lewis George’s past record includes helping the attorney general’s office create D.C.’s lenient juvenile justice system.

Crime is a top voter issue in the November election, with youth arrests increasing for years and comprising an above-average portion of the district’s reported crime. Lewis George was the assistant prosecutor in the office’s Juvenile Section from October 2016 to January 2019 as former Attorney General Karl Racine shifted the office’s policies away from incarceration and prosecution. Now a D.C. Council member, Lewis George frames her work for Racine as “juvenile justice reform” based on “innovative, evidence-based practices.”

Records show how Racine advanced a radical pro-rehabilitation philosophy under Lewis George’s team with three programs: “Alternatives to the Court Experience,” the “Restorative Justice Program,” and “Abating Truancy Through Engagement and Negotiated Dialogue.” Lewis George is now heavily favored to win in the Democrat-voting district against her Green Party rival — setting up a likely clash between her and the Trump administration on public safety.

Lewis George’s campaign did not provide a comment when the Washington Examiner reached out. Racine endorsed her mayoral run in April, saying she is “smart, she works hard, she gets the job done, and she always puts people first.” The Democratic Socialists of America also endorsed and conducted voter outreach for Lewis George’s campaign.

When prosecution becomes a ‘last resort’

Racine’s office scarcely mentioned Lewis George’s prosecutorial work publicly, and D.C. law keeps most juvenile criminal cases under seal. But others did the talking on the lax policies she helped implement.

D.C. launched “Alternatives to the Court Experience,” or ACE, in 2014, “to divert youth from prosecution for truancy and low-level delinquency offenses,” according to D.C.’s Department of Health Services. Juvenile Section prosecutors refer defendants to the program to receive therapy, tutoring, substance abuse treatment, and other rehabilitation methods.

The attorney general’s office reported by February 2017, it had diverted more than 900 youths to the program. Under Lewis George, the office boasted that the numbers had grown to more than 1,800 through 2017 and more than 2,000 through 2018. About a fourth of the approximate 2,000 were arrested again by the program’s fourth year, Racine’s office said, praising its “great success.”

Racine’s office put together its “Restorative Justice Program” in 2016 and fully implemented it by 2017, when Lewis George led the Juvenile Section, according to records. Popularized by academics and activists, restorative justice is the idea of forgoing punishment when an offender admits wrongdoing and takes steps to remedy harm to the victim.

“Individual Juvenile Section prosecutors refer cases for Restorative Justice Conferencing where the victim of the crime is amenable,” Racine testified to the D.C. Council in 2017. This marked the country’s first restorative justice program in a prosecutor’s office, Racine’s office said in its 2018 annual report. His team has worked to help prosecutors’ offices create their own such programs around the country, the report said.

“Nationwide statistics show these programs have better success at rehabilitating offenders, increasing victim satisfaction, and lowering costs,” the office claimed in a 2017 annual report. Around one-fifth of offenders in the program were rearrested by the first year, according to the report.

By February 2019, a month after Lewis George left the attorney general’s office, the Juvenile Section had referred more than 160 cases to the restorative justice program, Racine told the council that year.

The former attorney general did not stop with restorative justice and ACE. His office launched “Abating Truancy Through Engagement and Negotiated Dialogue,” or ATTEND, in 2018 to help parents avoid prosecution over their children’s absenteeism between ages 5 and 12.

Racine argued the diversion program helped address “underlying issues” behind truancy in 2020 testimony, listing poverty, homelessness, mental health struggles, and drug use. “For truancy, prosecution and involvement in the juvenile justice system should be the last resort, reserved for only the most chronically truant students after other social supports and school efforts have failed,” the attorney general’s office said in its 2017 report.

D.C.’s truancy and absenteeism problems have been worse since the program’s launch.

In the 2018-2019 school year, chronic absenteeism in D.C. schools rose by 4% since 2015 to 2016, and truancy rose by 8.5%, bring the share of students truant or chronically absent to roughly 30%, according to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. The office reported higher chronic absenteeism and truancy rates at 39.5% and 36.8%, respectively, in the 2024-2025 school year. Local officials have often blamed juvenile crime rates in part on D.C.’s school attendance crisis.

Conflict on the horizon

Trump has increasingly put D.C. leadership in the hot seat over crime and threatened to “take back” federal control of the district if Lewis George becomes mayor. The DSA-backed candidate has already displayed a conflicting vision for public safety.

The president began a district-wide crime operation in August that has involved National Guard patrols, increased federal agent presence on the streets, and more federal and local police collaboration under Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser. He also temporarily put the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control by declaring a crime emergency under the Home Rule Act.

Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro specifically criticized D.C.’s juvenile justice system as soft on criminals in an August press conference. “I can’t arrest them, I can’t prosecute them,” said Pirro, whose office handles both federal and local D.C. cases. “They go to family court and they get to do yoga and arts and crafts. Enough. It changes today.”

DC AGENCY CONFIRMS POLICE RIGGED CRIME STATS THE LEFT USED TO DEBUNK TRUMP

Contrary to Trump’s aggressive approach, Lewis George’s public safety platform mentions replacing police officers with health professionals in certain emergencies and ending local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, she also favors aggressive gun crime enforcement, boosting resources for detectives, and “holding repeat dangerous drivers accountable,” the platform says.

Lewis George also promises to decrease youth crime through supportive programs for young people and by making government entities more efficient. Her platform describes no enforcement measures against juvenile delinquency beyond “expanding home visiting.”